


sacrilege.

by caticoo



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), LIKE LOTS OF FUCKING MYSTERY ILL PROBABLY LEAVE U PARANOID JUST LIKE MY PRINCE, M/M, Mystery, Past Abuse, Religion, WELL MAYBE A LITTLE BIT OF DESPAIR ON THIS ONE...., oh boy this one got 40+ votes so... i gotta, the others got a lot of votes too but this one trampled ., there'll be more characters in the future!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-28 20:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12614328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caticoo/pseuds/caticoo
Summary: this is heaven, what i truly want. it's innocence lost.demon [hunter] & angel [killer] au.CURRENTLY ON HIATUS.





	1. open up your eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> hi. my name is cati! you probably know me for "my prince" or "soulmate's connection."  
> the votes for my next fic were fighting for the top place, haha! but in the end, this au won by nearly double the amount of the second place winner. don't fret. i'll be making many more saiouma au fics in the future. for now, you're treated with this.
> 
> to give you a time setting: when it begins, it's the 1970s (meaning in saihara's flashbacks in the beginning of chapter 1). BUT the fic itself takes place during the mid 1990s. just to give you a retrospect. it's more modern than my prince, but will be equally intense and maybe even more mysterious. because of the whole killing demons/angels jazz, there might even be some death. who knows.
> 
> this first chapter concerns a lot of saihara's past, which is important. some world building, to set things up, but don't worry. the saiouma content is coming.
> 
> as always, i hope you enjoy my work.

Before he was saved, Saihara had never been very religious.

The young man believed that there was nobody to help him but himself -- after all, he had been abandoned by most everyone since his birth (there was no use denying this. He saw his own documents with his own eyes.) There were far too many children in that orphanage, far too many occurrences of careless adults who carelessly had sex and carelessly decided to give up on one more hope in the world. If they wanted to disappoint more than just their parents, than it looked like they were just fine disappointing their biological child as well. It was a man-eat-man world, and you either got the glory or you fought trying. That was how it was in the orphanage.

“Give that back!” Saihara, who had no name at the time, squealed at an older orphan. The older orphan would have only laughed, throwing whatever toy Saihara wished to play with on a high shelf until that high shelf was filled to the ceiling with playthings, or a worker interrupted their “getting along time.” Saihara had always thought labeling that time as “getting along” was pathetic. He practically had every inch of him ripped out of the seams, with every form of being pushed around, submitting to the will of others both younger and older than him. He shrunk in self-confidence whenever someone laughed at him. He shrunk in self-confidence whenever someone called him “triangle eyes,” which, he’d come to realize, might have just been jealousy. It might not have. After all, he was raised around these kids to hate his unusually long under eyelashes.

It all changed the day when that cruel orphanage burned down, and finally, finally, he had been taken to a better home.

A home, where he would be loved. Where he could be treated like a normal child, and go to school like a normal child. He could listen to the radio at his own pace, or even watch TV, which the orphanage lacked. He could be fed food made specifically for him, and wear clothes that had’t been worn out by another child who had either gotten adopted or died trying to. This was the ideal life he wished for when he was adopted, and driven all the way home into the forests -- and it was the life he received.

At least, at first.

This life was the best he had received in all of his childhood, at least for the first year of his residence. Saihara was given a name -- Shuuichi Shibata -- and lived being called “Shibata” ever since he set foot in the old, creaky, yet homely wooden house. The boy grew up with a man who was a lumberjack, a woman who worked well with a wooden spoon and pot, and a sister who seemed to be far too concerned with the condition of a particularly bold looking man who donned a long hairstyle and particularly round-lensed glasses. Life was fine like this, and Saihara grew up loved -- or so it was.

The downhilling began the evening his sister was found missing from her room, a note on her desk going into no detail of her whereabouts -- simply, “I ran away.” Saihara hadn’t grasped the concept of running away, or why escaping from this situation was one that his sister (whose name was only discovered again recently by Saihara himself, who looked into the missing person case) wished for, but soon enough he was exposed to why. Perhaps they did not share the same reasons, but the whole idea of escaping, taking the coward’s way out, seemed like fresh desserts and sweetness to Saihara’s tongue and conscious. Especially the latter.

It started with running away. It ended with running away. That was the roundabout of the situation.

When it started with the running away, it shifted into the drinking. Suddenly, a mysterious circumstance that perhaps couldn’t be labeled as mysterious at all now that Saihara had fully grown, led his father to become unusually attracted to what Saihara now knew was whisky (in the beginning, he didn’t recognize the smell -- he couldn’t identify it. Yet, after this incident, he had associated the smell with terribleness and misfortune.) The smell became his warning, and what he had first thought of as a simple scent became the red, flashing, blaring alarm that would tell him to run, hide,  _ cower  _ \-- whatever he needed to do to stay safe.

In the end, it seemed like running was the greatest answer. Not only was it easy, but it was the most plausible as well -- Saihara couldn’t fight a force he had little power over. There was no use doing that if, in the end, he knew he tried for absolutely nothing. His father was a lumbering powerhouse that had always taken little for anybody, including his own family -- once his mind had been set, then he was sure to do what he wished to do. Sometimes this came to his advantage, other times it had not, and unfortunately, the latter seemed to be the case more than the former. Saihara remembered what his father looked like, even if it was by methods that were painful -- he was a well-built men with dark stubble, messily flopped tousles of hair on his head. He always wore some sort of freeing clothing, and seemed to always complain whenever he was put into a suit or other formal wear.

Saihara remembered his mother, too. She was dainty, soft, but had a resilience of steel -- her heart seemed to be made out of it too, and the only persons that had a lighter to set it melting were her husband and her kids. Otherwise, both his parents were quite strict towards others, the only scene of softening up being around him and his sister. But regardless of how they harshly they expressed themselves out of their home doors, Saihara genuinely believed they loved him. Even if they stopped. Even  _ when  _ they stopped.

The boy became overwhelmed. It had reached a point where love was lifeless. Love was a word unfamiliar to his being. Love was something he was taught of and  _ ripped  _ of at the slightest touch, a tease that only the devil would bring forth upon him. You could well imagine the frustration such a child went through, not knowing anything around him other than the sins of parents who were not even his own. The point of giving up drew near, and Saihara contemplated his ways out of the situation -- running away was optional. But running away seemed hard. What would he do? Where would he go? Who would take him? He was unwanted, unloved, and unneeded by all those around him soon after his father took up carrying a bottle everywhere he went and his mother following suit.

Like his mother following his father, Saihara soon followed his sister.

He did not leave a message. He did not think it would matter -- his father was too busied with either work or liquor. His mother was in a less flexible position, but nonetheless turning into a down spiral. Saihara didn’t think they loved him enough, at the time, to care, so he packed his belongings in an old sack used for his school things (dumping out his textbooks and workbook, leaving in only some paper and pencil, and filling it up with clothes, his toothbrush and toothpaste, soap, the like,) and set out. Stupidly, he had forgotten winter was abrink.

If you could imagine a chilly, starving, lost child in a snowstorm with little warmth other than a jacket and a small quilt, you would be imagining Saihara. He was dead meat, and this dawned on him only several hours after aimlessly wandering through the forests -- the day was still among him when he had, causing him to have little fear of the trees and other unknowns that may have surrounded him. By the time he knew he would be catching a cold or perhaps worst, he was already a couple miles away from the forests and down a dirt road, the snow beside it cleared out to form the pathway.

It didn’t take very long for Saihara to grow wary and stray towards a lone, dark, leafless tree, it’s bare branches sticking out against the white winter. It was snow from miles end, and Saihara could see his hometown those couple of miles away -- a vague shadowy mass looked further so on the opposite end. A new city, he assumed. Plunking his child-like, cold, freezing body onto the layer of snow, Saihara leaned against the tree and attempted to bundle himself up as much as possible with his limited sources of heat. Sleeping was difficult -- it was not like the bed he was used to, even if it slowly became crooked and rough. Sleeping on ice and bare bark was tougher.

When he awoke, it was pitch dark save for the moon above, and Saihara felt a warm sensation in his body. He began to think it was, finally, his body producing some heat that would soon lull him back to slumber -- he was wrong once he tried to rub his hands together. They felt numb, as if they would fall off at any moment, and Saihara found himself panicking, “Ah! AH! MY F-FINGERS, T-THEY--!”

“What’s wrong?”

The voice had him screaming, thinking it was some sort of ghoul -- it was quite the opposite.  _ Definitely  _ the opposite. A light, similarly to a firefly suddenly found itself right in front of the young boy, and Saihara’s attention was immediately drawn towards the warming glow. Saihara stammered, the chill coming back, “M-M-My f-f-fingers… n-numb… f-felt like they w-were gonna f-fall off…!”

“I see,” The light spoke, or what Saihara assumed to be the light. “Alright. Come along.”

The light’s mass grew into something more human-like -- something that Saihara couldn’t quite make out due to the sheer brightness, but he felt a hand wrap slowly around his own. Regular body heat soon engulfed his entire being, and he suddenly felt completely fine, “W-Wha…? Hey, this is kinda…”

“Weird? I know. Don’t question it,” The light, far too bright for Saihara to stare directly at, mused. With the warmth of the hand, Saihara collected his belongings and traversed through the snow with the aid of the light -- Saihara watched his shoes sink into the inches of snow below him for what he thought was only a couple of seconds, but when he looked up, he was facing the entrance to a house surrounded by other houses -- despite just being in a snow-covered field.

“Huh? Wha--? How?” Saihara questioned quizzically. The light was still there, now back to it’s original, firefly-size. “Oh… you’re back to your tiny size.”

“Shuuichi,” The light spoke. Saihara’s attention was fully on the light. “We’ll meet again! I’m watching you from above.” The shine soon faded, and Saihara was left in the dark -- the only aid of brightness being the streetlights. Saihara knocked on the door. A man, probably in his early 40s or 50s, answered the door.

“What do we have here?” He gruffly asked, a jolly smile on his face. “Who might you be?”

“Um…,” Saihara mumbled, unsure of how to answer. He was no longer a Shibata. So that must mean… “I’m… I’m Shuuichi. I don’t have a last name anymore. The li --  _ er  _ \-- someone took me here.”

“I see,” The man mused, stepping aside. “Why don’t you come in, and we’ll have a little chat about why they brought you here, hm?”

The man was Saihara’s biological uncle.

 

* * *

 

“Yah-hah! Good mornin’, Saihara!” The sound of his familiar called out to him, her white tresses bouncing out from under her nun hat. Saihara smiled.

“Good morning, Sister Angie,” The detective, dressed in his weekend robes, replied. Yonaga was by far the most back-boned priestess Saihara had ever met -- and he had known her now for seventeen years. He knew every inch of Kumanami Church, even the parts that he didn’t want to or wish to know of -- it became his second home. Everything from the regulars, to the amount of money certain people put in the offering tray, to the creaks in the confession booth and the small tear in the cloth draped over the back pew (the lefthand one) purely for decoration purposes. Angie Yonaga was one of the greatest qualities of the church -- she was known by everyone who attended, as small as the population was. “Did Ms. Aisana visit already?”

“Mhm! Her confession had Kiyo astounded,” Yonaga chimed, as peppy as ever. She was well in her forties, and yet, she still beheld all of her younger days’ youth. Admittingly it was a bit strange to know her actual age -- many assumed, by her young looking face, that she was still in her late twenties or early thirties -- but Saihara had grown so used to her personality that it was more difficult seeing her act her age than otherwise. “She can’t seem to get off her liquor, huh?”

“I guess not,” Saihara responded simply, his amused smile forming into one of politeness. Although you could imagine he’d have a touchy spot when it came to alcoholics, he accepted Ms. Aisana for trying her hardest to quit -- after all, she visited the confession booth every Saturday and Sunday morning. Always a different party, always a different drink, always a different guy, and the same apology to the lord every time. “Where’s Korekiyo?”

“Ohhh, right! We have a surprise, actually! Come, come!” Yonaga gestured, flipping her hand towards the back rooms. Saihara raised an eyebrow quizzically, but followed his fellow sister who almost tumbled against her robes in excitement. The only things Angie seemed to be extremely enthusiastic about was her creative art and when a wedding took place in Kumanami. Yonaga peeked into the door to the back room -- observing for a moment, and then quickly returning back to her prior position. “Not yet, not yet! One momento!”

Saihara gave an awkward but understanding smile, and stood alongside his senior as he looked over the scenery of the church. Kumanami Church was nothing to brag about compared to its sister church, Kumasutra Church -- a much larger, more successful, richer version of Kumanami. It all started several hundred years ago -- Kumanami was the to-go church of the quiet little town of Kalopsia, which soon blossomed into a booming city. With the influx of trade came the influx of people, came the influx of houses and business and residence -- Kumanami raised money to build a bigger, better church in the heart of Kalopsia. This was done, and the original Kumanami was said to be destroyed, but a petition had stopped it and instead preserved its condition.

The church was still in good condition, and was still used -- although, the amount of people that attended its Sunday sermons was far, far less than Kumasutra. The forty pews laid out, twenty on one side, twenty on another, only filled with introverts and oddballs who enjoyed a quieter, less crowded sermon, and enjoyed the drive all the way out a little ways stray from the main town. Kumanami probably only needed three or four pews max with the amount of guests it received, but weddings and funerals were what prevented any removal of pews (not to mention, Yonaga would never be convinced to remove anything from the church. They were all history to her.)

Saihara had begun to visit the church as soon as he was brought in as his now uncle’s nephew. The light he had been visited by was what Saihara could only assume to be an  _ angel  _ \-- and this was the catch of the world.

Angels and demons visiting you were a thing. So were angel killers and demon hunters.

Saihara had been blinded to this concept with his lack of exposure to the outside world, past education he received for a year at his school with his adopted family. He lacked friends to tell him of this concept, and it was only through research of his own that he was able to dig up stories in old newspapers that his uncle kept, as he worked as a detective, about the incidents of humans interacting with angels and demons. It may have seemed like a radical concept, but the amount of divine and mortal interactions took a great increase in those years.

Angels came forth to humans guiding and aiding them. Demons visited to strike up deals and havoc. But by far the most interesting concept of it all were the fights that occurred between these two.

Seeing these fights were a rare sight to the human eye, but there were several reported around the world. Not very many, and it wasn’t even confirmed to be scientifically correct, but with the amount of reported incidents and the rise of official angel and demon forthcomings, science couldn’t bat its eyes away. Theories in different newspapers claimed that demons and angels were having a great war at the moment -- the Lord of the Underworld was fighting the Lord of the Heavens after years of torment via humans. Saihara recalled his conversation with Yonaga about it in his youth -- she claimed that those theories were correct, and Saihara needed to try his best to pray for the angels.

Knowing,  _ believing  _ it was an angel that had helped him that one fateful evening, Saihara had become devoted to religion ever since.

Angie peaked back into the room anxiously, and seemed to make facial gestures to whoever was inside -- assumingly Korekiyo. Korekiyo Shinguji was the other religious priest at Kumanami, and, with Yonaga, they made up quite literally the only staff at the church -- they practically lived with each other in the place, and Yonaga had even claimed that Kiyo worked another job to support them and the church. They were not married, for their titles as a priest and a sister forbid them to -- but to Saihara, they were like parents he had never had. Angie gestured quickly towards Saihara again, “Shuuichi! Shuuichi! Come! Let’s go!”

Saihara followed the enthusiastic Yonaga, who sped in front of him -- Saihara chuckled, “Hey, wait--

When he entered the back room, he immediately locked eyes with a person unfamiliar to his eyes -- trails of dark hair poked from under their nun’s hood; bright, bold, purple eyes staring right back into Saihara’s soul. A face as pale as the moon herself, yet a smile as dashing and daring as the sun -- a giggle, “Nishishi~ guess we’re gonna be in training together!”

“This young man is Ouma Kokichi,” Shinguji introduced for the other -- despite calling him a man, Ouma wore a nun’s outfit. “...A stubborn one that wouldn’t allow me to give him a priest’s uniform.”

Ouma approached him hastily, now closer than before, speaking no words -- his eyes, sparkling, spoke for themselves. Shinguji continued.

“You two will get along, yes?”


	2. don't look away.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> saihara remembers the past. but maybe the future is a little sweet, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi again.  
> oh boyo... sorry this one was sort of another info chapter too. but all of this is necessary to give you guys hints and clues for the mysteries that are going to pile up i future chapters!
> 
> as always, i hope you enjoy reading.

It was easy, yet difficult, to differentiate Yonaga from Ouma.

They wore the exact same uniform -- a nun’s outfit, with a long head dress to compliment their dark dress robes -- yet if you put them both under a silhouette, it wouldn’t take very long for Saihara to figure out who was who. And he had already come to this confident conclusion approximately three hours after meeting Ouma. In the span of those three hours, more had happened in comparison to the last three weeks of Saihara’s life. Once Shinguji had introduced Ouma, the latter seemed a little bit too enthusiastic to meet him -- Ouma kept jittering where he stood when Shinguji specified the places of the confession booth and the contents of the back room, which was right next to Saihara.

Yonaga and Ouma were similar, yet quite different. They were exactly the same height, almost to an eerie extent, and they both beheld quite… unique personalities. With Yonaga’s strong devotion to the church and the wellbeing of everything in it, and Ouma’s already presented quirkiness and oddities -- they held different motives with similar ways of portraying them, which was probably why Saihara already felt a little comforted in Ouma’s presence. Ouma and Yonaga seemed to hit it off immediately -- once the formalities were cleared up, the two were off talking about various different things before Shinguji had gathered Ouma back up for the tour. Despite her older age, Yonaga never seemed to slow down.

It was a striking difference compared to Shinguji, who was much more calm and collected. Although Shinguji too held his own quirks and unique traits, he was definitely the more rational one between he and Yonaga -- they made an odd, but complementing, pair. Saihara couldn’t imagine a day going by in a what-if scenario where one would be missing from the equation. After all, they were the people he was raised around, alongside his uncle -- you either got the both of them or none. It was a take-it-or-leave-it.

“...Be kind to him, Shuichi,” Shinguji flatly requested during their tour, while Ouma spent a moment alone in the confession box per strange request -- he would not spout confessions, rather wallow in the silence of the small room for several minutes. Saihara had glanced at his priest friend more than once at strange actions Ouma performed (sitting on a high ledge above the entrance, badly playing an out of tune melody the organ, specifically commanding he, Saihara and Shinguji stand in a very specific order at the altar,) but Shinguji simply regarded him with glances. “He claims to be…  _ new _ , to Kalopsia. But with the way he’s been acting, you might assume he may just be from another planet, hm?”

Saihara looked towards Shinguji at the suggestion, watching the cloth that surrounded his mouth with a concentrated face. Ouma did seem sort of alien -- the way he acted was strange, but it seemed he wasn’t exactly unused to social interaction. In the span of three hours of touring the church, going over rules, and looking over their work and teaching schedules, Saihara had learned several things about Ouma, from Shinguji or from Ouma himself. Firstly, he was the largest liar that Saihara had ever met -- he played jokes whenever possible, used every chance he could get ahold of to trick either Saihara or Shinguji into momentarily believing something that may have been true to his being. If it suited him, Ouma would admit to a statement being a lie -- if it did not, he left it all as an open-ended “who knows?”

According to Shinguji’s words, as Ouma watched them communicate with a patient yet naughty smile on his face, the new priest had been looking for a place of residence after finishing college just a week ago -- he had knocked on the door of Kumanami Church just that night at an ungodly hour. Thankfully, Yonaga had been awake creating what would have to be her umpteeth painting for the evening (Yonaga claimed she absolutely needed to be alone while she created her art -- the only person allowed to watch her progress was God himself,) and had initially been annoyed by the latecomer. However, seeing the frail looking young man at the church’s doorsteps, and his quiet pleas for an overnight residence, Yonaga didn’t hesitate to take him in and even wake up Shinguji to introduce him to their temporary guest.

Ouma, then, decided right then and there he would join the priesthood after Shinguji had tiredly mentioned that they “did not have enough employees” to deal with these sorts of situations, despite Yonaga and Shinguji being the ones that  _ lived  _ in the church. His sudden forwardness and enthusiasm towards a job as a priest at Kumanami Church was what sent Yonaga cheering and Shinguji lowly chuckling, thinking he was simply impulsive with his words. The latter had thought there would be multiple things contradicting Ouma’s validity to become a priest, like his age or a college diploma, but these two things were confirmed by a certificate that was scrolled up in his small looking travel bag, and a driver’s license he whipped out of a wallet in his back pocket. With Yonaga’s encouragement as well, Shinguji had no choice but to accept Ouma as an employee.

Saihara could see the tiredness in Shinguji’s eyes ever since he had locked with them that morning, but the priest went very far for the church. Saihara aspired to be that devoted one day.

Which was why he begun to do this in the first place -- enter the priesthood, he meant. On the weekdays he was far too busied with working in his uncle’s place at the detective agency in the middle of Kalopsia -- after his sudden death, Saihara was immediately thrust into a pithole of expectations and responsibilities and a name with cases to harbor. Saihara’s uncle’s death was only two years prior, but it always felt like only yesterday Saihara was coming home to the scent of brewed coffee and warm, solitary silent. He and his uncle were both introverts to the very end, and the similarities they shared were uncanny -- even if they weren’t related by blood, the qualities the both of them beheld would have already had people believing they shared  _ something _ . They liked their coffees and teas with some, but definitely not a lot, of milk, were suckers for mysteries, and enjoyed their times alone. Saihara would have described his uncle as someone who he also aspired to be.

Saihara’s uncle’s death affected him greatly. While Yonaga and Shinguji were his parental figures, his uncle was his aspiration and life goals’ drive -- he was the one that motivated him to pursue detective work ever since he had taken him in in his youth. He was the one who had guided him during the weekdays, was the adult he returned to after a tiring day of schooling, and was the person who he had genuine blood relations with that felt right to call “family.” After how much he suffered with the word before meeting his uncle, the sorrow he felt after losing yet another person to an upsetting feeling would forever plague his heart. Thankfully, Yonaga and Shinguji were there for moral support always, and Saihara was sure things would have been much, much different if he did not have their presence in his life.

It was a car accident at the west side of town, the furthest it could be away from Kumanami Church. Saihara’s father had been driving from the town over, and the other party had been making their way in a quick speed towards the city that Saihara’s uncle was leaving. According to inquiries, a fight between the driver and a backseat passenger had caused the carelessness of the road. The driver, who was a young girl said to be the backseat passenger's acquaintance. The reason they had been driving to the next town over was because the backseat passenger had requested a ride with her -- they were partners in a school project, and were half way through their final school year until the fateful accident. Through her sobs at her interview, the surviving passenger claimed their quarrel was something just as simple as the way the driver dressed that evening, and she promised on local television she would not be picky about people’s clothings anymore.

The survivor and technical cause of the crash did not come out without any battlescars. Saihara knew she was rendered permanently paralyzed past her waist, and had to wheelchair herself around while she lived in the care of a support center in Kalopsia (Saihara had discovered she had been living in the support center before, as of her sophomore year she had been taken away from an abusive home [Saihara could deeply input empathy for her.]) Saihara did not behold any grudge for the girl, however, as she seemed to had always been apologetic about the accident -- so much so, that she visited Kuminami instead of Kumasutra ever since the incident began, aware that it was the church Saihara’s uncle and Saihara himself attended, always attending Sunday sermons and giving her grief for Saihara’s uncle (as well as the driver).

After his uncle’s death, Saihara had promised himself he would further improve his performance as a detective. He had only been working with his uncle (finally) a single, precious year -- when he was fresh out of four year college and prepared for the world that his uncle was so familiar with. Everyone in Kalopsia’s detective agency was happy to officially have Saihara on the job, as he was known around the agency ever since he had been adopted by his uncle -- being called “mini Saihara” or other fond nicknames. Everyone that worked at the agency also accepted Saihara like family, and grew up alongside him whenever Saihara begged his uncle to take him with him to his office. The grief the agency shared at Saihara’s uncle’s death was what lightened the load on his nephew, who voluntarily adopted all of the cases that his uncle had left behind, not realizing he would never solve them. Saihara hadn’t disappointed his familiars at the offices yet -- they constantly reminded him how similar he was to his uncle.

So, Saihara had lived alone for two years -- simply going to his work as a detective, and coming home to silence. Except, there was no warmth to return to, nor was there the smell of faint coffee or traces of another presence. It remained the way that Saihara had left it when he had gone to the offices every morning and returned every evening, and it set him with a lonely, melancholic feeling. As much as he enjoyed solitude, it was difficult to always return to a home which he shared with his now deceased uncle, especially at the beginning of it all -- so Saihara had found himself making the drive to Kuminami every evening after an hour or so of work. His visits to the church weren’t exactly to pray -- sometimes he went just to visit his uncle’s grave, which lay in the cemetery only a few yards away from Kuminami church. Other times he couldn’t bare the thought, and simply entered the small, run down church to make conversation with Yonaga or Shinguji, who welcomed his presence as if he was coming home to them. Sometimes Saihara had even stayed the night, sleeping on one of the pews -- the church had become a second home to him after so many years.

It was during this time where he was encouraged by his own will and small hints from both Yonaga and Shinguji to enter the priesthood as a second job. Not only was Saihara already quite devoted (he did spend his leisure time in the church purposefully), but he seemed to be already so attached to Kuminami that having him officially as one of their own would only strengthened their familial bond (which seemed a little unnecessary, since the three had already become very close in the seventeen years of knowing one another, but Saihara got the point). Saihara made it his personal promise to Yonaga and Shinguji, two eccentric yet extremely caring people, that once he turned the proper age of 25, he would be entering priesthood as a second job -- since his detective work took up the majority of the weekdays, Saihara was mostly free during the weekends save for some work he could do at home, like use his logic to figure out cases.

He had turned 25 that autumn, but due to work efforts he was out of town on a chase for a missing person who had demanded Kalopsia’s detective agency to find for a high reward. Saihara never did cases directly for the money (well, he did, but he was paid just for doing something he liked doing), but the amount that they were offering was of a whopping amount -- Saihara considered donating a majority of it to Kuminami. With how busy he had suddenly gotten between September and the now brisk, cold, December, it was difficult to come to the church as usually as he did on a familiar basis, but Yonaga and Shinguji wholeheartedly understood that life was simply like that. It only strengthened his desire to join Yonaga and Shinguji, and when all the cases settled down and Saihara was promised an official inauguration into priesthood, he had been greeted head-first by another individual who also wanted to join.

This person being Ouma.

Saihara was snapped back to reality with the sound of the confession booth’s door opening, and the already familiar presence of Ouma stepping out with little care, his dress fluttering with the grand step he took as he exited. “Yawwwwn. Alright, I’m bored of all of this. Hey, Shinguji, lemme go to town!” Ouma implored, causing a glare from the priest -- Ouma had already committed more sins than Saihara could count, the most tallying one being his lies. “...And that’s not a lie. Pleeeease! I barely know this place, too! What if I get killed--!?”

Saihara had already gotten used to the fakery of his visage, and the two remained in stilled silence as they just watched the other, dressed down in his nun uniform tear up. Seeing neither of them react was what caused Ouma to suddenly shift back into a bored expression, and sneer, “...Oh, you guys really are no fun. Maybe I’ll ditch this stupid priest job. Maybe I’ll become a stripper instead!”

“Why--” Shinguji began, looking irritated with Ouma even through the cloth he wore on half of his face -- Saihara held him back with a calm hand, and this was what brought Shinguji back to a usual state of peace. Shinguji did not often get irritated, but Saihara could definitely understand with how sleep-deprived he looked. A sigh escaped from the older man. “...Ah, I’m quite fatigued anyhow… Shuuichi, would you be kind enough to show Ouma around the area? Apologize to Angie if necessary. I believe she’s clearing up the area outside of snow.” And with that, true to his claims of being tired, Shinguji excused himself to the back rooms of the church. Ouma snickered, swaying in the flowy nun’s outfit -- twirling around.

“Nishishi~! I can’t believe that actually worked! Now I can spend all the time I want with Saihara-chan,” Ouma chimed, slowing his twirling in order to slow down directly in front of the detective -- Saihara’s eyes widened, with furrowed brows. A wide, mischievous, but interested grin painted the boy’s face as the gap between the two became smaller and smaller (Saihara’s steps grew smaller as well, as when he tried to step back, Ouma’s forwards only grew larger). Saihara realized how similarly he looked to the moon, in that headdress of his. His skin was just as ghostly pale as hers, accompanied by large, dark craters which Saihara called his eyes -- the tresses and tousles of Ouma’s hair, which poked out from the cloth, trickled down the crevices where there would have been empty space, the surrounding atmosphere. It was met with the starking black of the material, the amount of dark matter that made up the blanket of stars.

The only exception was that the stars were not in dark space, rather, they were right in those craters of Ouma’s. It momentarily mesmerized Saihara, to how ethereally…  _ pretty  _ Ouma was. He had thought this for only a split-second before just as quickly smothering the thought -- no, that was weird. He had only met this guy three or so hours ago, and he was calling him physically attractive? How ridiculous. (But was it really? After all, it was possible for you to simply look at someone on the other side of the street or pass by you in a crowded space and already deduce them as beautiful in your mind. Wasn’t that what they called love at first sight? No… that was stupid, too. There was no such thing as love at first sight. Saihara’d refuse to believe that.)

He hadn’t realized the thought of it all was making him red in the face, and he only noticed it until it was far too late. Ouma had gotten  _ far  _ too close for comfort, and Saihara had to put up his two hands to try and make  _ some  _ sort of distance between them -- with this, Ouma had stopped trying to tiptoe his way so that there was nothing but contact of their chests, and instead was satisfied with how close they were now. Saihara’s hands, when put up to make that space, were raised to a point of being at Ouma’s shoulders -- their height difference was a sight, to say the least. Ouma had his head tilted at a slight, though, he was not directly staring at Saihara… rather at something below his eyes. Saihara settled himself with believing he was intrigued by his nose.

“Hey, Saihara-chan. Let’s play with each other -- after all, Shinguji  _ did  _ say we should get along.”

It was all too head-spinning, as Ouma drew some centimeters closer in leaning towards Saihara’s countenance. Saihara was extremely lucky that nobody was in the church at that time, witnessing this whole ordeal. It must have looked ridiculous. They must have looked ridiculous. The only difference between the two of them was that Ouma seemed to look like he was enjoying himself to a  _ dreamy  _ extent. His tone matched his expression well.

“I promise, it won’t be boring at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh no... that's gay
> 
> remember that i love all of you guys! thank you so much for comments, kudos, bookmarks, subscriptions.... everything hfgjdgewgw.... you all are so, so good to me. i hope i'll be able to please you further.
> 
> as always, thank you for your support. please remember to always be kind to yourself.


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